Saturday, December 13, 2014

Triple Race to Fiftieth Anniversary

A moment before dispersing
itself, the outgoing Knesset still managed to re-enact the law authorizing the
years-long detention without trial of African asylum seekers in the Negev “open
prison”. A law which was already twice overturned by the Supreme Court. But for
Likud’s Miri Regev, Chair of the Knesset Interior Committee the bill was “not tough enough.” She promised: "Next
time we get to power we will enact a stronger law”.

"Next time
we get to power" - Regev probably
didn’t notice what she let slip. She didn’t say "After the elections” but
“Next time we get to power”. For the first time in quite a while, the Likud
winning the elections and Netanyahu's remaining in power no longer seem to be a
self-evident outcome.

Just a week ago,
most commentators - and the general public – thought new elections will not
bring any substantial change in the political situation; that calling elections
two years ahead of time was a waste of time and money. And then the atmosphere
changed overnight, and the possibility of a change in government has suddenly
come to seem concrete and real. It is not unthinkable that in a few months we will start getting used
to the phrase "Prime Minister Yitzhak Herzog”.

Making this a
reality seems a goal worthy of hard work and effort, even though there were Prime
Ministers from the Israeli Labor Party whose tenure ended in bitter
disappointment and shambles. A goal certainly worthy of hard work and effort -
especially considering that if Netanyahu does manage to win the elections and
put together his fourth cabinet, it is quite possible that we will have to get
used to "Defense Minister Naftali Bennett". (Better not to dwell too deeply
on what that would imply and entail...)

Last week, one
day before Netanyahu dismissed his Minister of Finance and Minister of Justice and
thereby brought his cabinet into a terminal crisis, the French Parliament
decided by a majority of 339 against 151 to call upon the French government to
recognize the State of Palestine. This week, a day after the Knesset dissolved
itself, the Irish Parliament joined the swelling ranks of European parliaments
making such resolutions. Like their colleagues in other countries, Irish
lawmakers called upon their government to "officially
recognize the State of Palestine, on the basis of the 1967 borders, with East
Jerusalem as the capital, as established in UN resolutions” and stated that
such an act would be “a further positive contribution to securing a negotiated
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."At the time of
writing, a similar resolution was passed by the Portuguese Parliament, and the
European Parliament is to debate the same next week.

The diplomatic
clock is ticking inexorably toward the moment when the UN Security Council deliberates
the draft resolution setting a definite two-year date for the end of Israeli occupation
of the Palestinian territories. The United States would have to make the
decision whether or not to impose a veto. The Palestinians do not seem inclined
to wait for the Israeli elections and halt efforts on the international arena.
Whoever enters next March into the Prime Minister’s bureau in West Jerusalem
might face a new diplomatic landscape.

In the meantime,
on the ground, the Palestinian villagers of Turmus Ayya, Al Mughayer, Qaryut and Jalud went out, together with
Israeli peace activists, to demonstrate near settlement outpost "Adey Ad"
(“Forever and Ever”). Mayors of the four
villages had appealed to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, asking to evacuate the
outpost and implement the demolition orders which the army itself issued
against the settler houses.

The Palestinian
villagers intended to plant olive saplings on their land, recognized as such by
the Israeli authorities, but which the settlers claim as being part of the
outpost and as “Jewish land from time immemorial”. Soldiers on the spot were given
unequivocal instructions to block the Palestinian demonstrators and prevent
them at all costs from approaching the settlers; the orders issued by commanding
officers made no reference to the fact that the army itself considers the outpost
to be illegal. The soldiers started shooting tear gas, although the Palestinians
refrained from throwing stones. Some of the soldiers were not content with
shooting tear gas from a distance – rather, they closed with the protesters, beat
up some of them, grabbed other by the throat and threw them on the ground. All
this took place on December 10, which happens to be International Human Rights
Day.

Video
photographers accompanied the protest and took extensive footage, as they
routinely do at all the many demonstrations throughout the Occupied Territories.
But usually there is not much chance of Israeli TV broadcasting them. However, among the protesters
was this time Ziad Abu Ein, the Palestinian Minister in charge of the Struggle Against
the Settlements: by title, a cabinet minister and part of a Palestinian
government which is supposed to exercise governing power, in reality an activist
living under occupation and forced to face the occupier’s soldiers and settlers
in a protest demonstration. In the end
of the protest, the unconscious Abu Ein was taken to hospital in Ramallah,
where he died.

Exactly how did
the actions of the soldiers confronting the demonstration relate to the death
of Minister Ziad Abu Ein? This afternoon I conducted a lengthy argument with an
unidentified caller who resented the text of the ad published by Gush Shalom.
"Why did you write in your ad that he was killed in a confrontation with
soldiers? He died from a heart attack!" - "If soldiers fire tear gas
on a heart patient, is there a connection between that and the heart attack
from which he died right afterwards? If a soldier takes a heart patient by the throat
and chokes him, is that connected with the heart attack?" - "If he
had a heart condition, he should not have been there. He took a risk." -
"When a soldier goes into battle, he is taking a risk. There at the
settler outpost was also a battlefield of a kind, only that Ziad Abu Ein went
there empty-handed, without arms. That
was the risk which he and his fellows took.”

Soldier holding Ziad
Abu Ein by the throat, a few minutes before he lost consciousness.(Photo:Mahmmood Arafaat.)

Is the death of
Ziad Abu Ein going to be the spark which would set off the great conflagration of
the Third Intifada, which has long been talked of? Probably not yet, although yesterday
afternoon came the news of a Palestinian throwing acid on the passengers of an
Israeli car - apparently yet another case of an act of violence undertaken at
an individual’s personal initiative without any organizational guidance.

Even after this
violent death of one of their own senior
people, the Palestinian Authority and PLO, under the leadership of
Mahmud Abbas, seems determined to continue the delicate balancing act: militant
rhetoric and diplomatic offensive, combined with continuation of “security
coordination” with the Israeli security services which is highly unpopular with
grassroots Palestinians. This could be maintained for some time yet, at least
as long as there seems a chance for the diplomatic approach to achieve concrete
results.

In a little over
two years and a half, on 5 June 2017, a symbolic date is due - a precise fifty years since the occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israel's armed forces. If this symbolic date
passes without a significant change in the situation, it will be hard for the State
of Israel to continue arguing that its
rule over the Palestinians is just "temporary”.

Three ongoing processes
take part in a race against time towards this symbolic date - the changes
taking place in the Israeli political system, the diplomatic process led by the
Palestinians in the international arena, and the growing escalation of violence
on the ground. Which
of them will be the first to arrive at the finishing line?

~~~

The petition of
Israeli citizens, calling upon European parliamentarians to support recognition
of Palestine, continues to gather momentum. Among the latest to join more than
900 signatories are the writers Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, as
well as singers Achinoam “Noa” Nini and Mira Awad.

Dalia Yairi-Dolev is a well
Israeli radio broadcaster, writer and poet. Her first husband was Colonel Uzi
Ya’airi, killed in battle with Palestinians in 1975. Though considered broadly
dovish in orientation, she never took an outspoken political position, and on
one occasion was invited by AIPAC to address the lobby’s annual conference in
Washington. She has now decided to strongly endorse the petition to the
European parliamentarians:

This petition is an outspoken
declaration, aimed at underlining how vitally important this issue is for us.
It expresses the aspirations of the generations who were born and grew up here,
dreaming of a country with secure borders, a country which invests its
resources in its citizens, in education, in health services, in the standard of
living, in the quality of life. A democratic, egalitarian state whose army is
in truth “The Israeli Defense Forces” - an army which knows how to defend and
safeguard both security and peace. This
petition expresses how deeply these generations long for quiet, for peace – all
of them, those who were born before the state was set up [like Yairi-Dolev
herself], and those who were born afterwards, and those who were born to these
and grew up and undergone military service. Longing for peace, for a clearly
defined state of our own. Better a cold peace with soldiers
guarding a clearly-delineated border than a military involvement among a
hostile population. A state is an entity, a clearly defined “address” of those
whom we face. A Palestinian state is not a gift to the Palestinians. It is a
gift to ourselves. It is our liberation from the chains binding us to them.
Creation of a Palestinian state is the Palestinians’ share in the process of
their divorce from us. There are those who try to draw us into a trap of fear
and demagogic threats, as if the creation of a Palestinian state is a threat to
us. It is not a threat, it is a promise. A promise of normalization, of a
future.